DEVELOPMENT TAKING ITS TOLL ON BIRDS AND THEIR HABITATS

Local animal preserves report getting calls on increasing numbers of dying and seriously injured seabirds. Seagulls and sandpipers are taking a beating. Gannets are coming in on gurneys. So are boobies, loons and smaller garden- varieties such as mockingbirds and blue jays.

Her group is one of two in the county that attempt to aid the ailing flocks while trying to create adequate facilities to deal with the continual casualties. A third preserve has an injured bird exhibit, but cannot accept more of the injured creatures.

Each year the Ocean Impact project sends volunteers out to the waterways to feed hundreds of birds and bring back injured ones for treatment.

But the numbers are too high for all the volunteers and staff to treat. Suave says Ocean Impact can accept only one-fourth of the birds reported to them.

The non-profit group treated 38 seabirds between Jan. 31 and Feb. 5 and took calls on three seabirds either shot or gaffed between Feb. 3 and Wednesday.

In addition, Lion Country Safari in West Palm Beach is taking at least six calls a week to save seabirds, according to public relations director Brian Osborne.

The wild animal park has a tragic exhibit of injured seabirds in their park -- a sign of the times with posted explanations for visitors. One bird's beak is chopped. Another limps with mangled wings.

But Lion Country and Ocean Impact do not have the space or skill to treat any more birds.

"We can no longer actively accept injured birds," Osborne said.

Lion Country hands over sick birds to the Bambi Wildlife Sanctuary in West Palm Beach, he said.

Bambi is the only sanctuary in the county designed to care for injured pelicans, according to owners Wallace and Bonnie Findlay.

"But we also take other seabirds because there just aren't any other places for them to go," Bonnie Findlay said.

Bambi can nurture 150 to 200 birds at one time on its 30-acre sanctuary, she said. It is at capacity.

"Even though it has been unseasonably warm here this winter, it has been very cold up north," Findlay said. "The birds come here exhausted and hungry. They look to refill their fat supply with bait fish like mullet. But the bait houses take it away and many birds starve."

Also, the birds lose wings -- or their lives -- swooping into tools of urbanization: power lines, fishing twine and automobiles.

Starvation and injuries are not the only problems. Commercial and private development razes the hammock and dunes where seabirds live. Heavy metal poisoning from food sources also kills large birds, usually loons.

Because Palm Beach County does not have a rehabilitation center with an avian-trained medical staff, Bambi and Ocean Impact must re-route birds they can't take to either the Fort Lauderdale Wildlife Care Center or to the Treasure Coast Wildlife Hospital in Hobe Sound.

But Ocean Impact and Bambi plan to build adequate rehabilitation centers. Bambi is asking for private or public help to build one on its property. Impact officials hope to obtain county financing.

"The county needs a complete facility," Suave said. "We've got the homeless and abused children to worry about. The birds don't come first. But we are a very affluent community. It's up to us to pick up the pieces and make a decision on this. Something's got to give."